There are many firms participating in on-line retailing of groceries, and that number will grow in the next few years. Current net-based grocery services include Peapod/Ahold, Groceryworks/Safeway, eGrocer, Priceline Webhouse. Peapod/Ahold and Groceryworks/Safeway mainly coordinate the delivery of groceries for consumers. The eGrocer service advertises end-to-end online business solutions for the grocery industry, including among other things software solutions, database management solutions, and web-hosting solutions. This service is available to individual grocery stores, who wish to offer their consumers on-line grocery shopping. This is not a value discovery tool. Priceline Webhouse, now discontinued, used “name your price” for groceries. Priceline's model was anti-discovery in that the consumer cannot solicit and compare bids; he/she must guess about best price and is committed if that offer is accepted. Priceline defined value as price, forcing the consumer to set aside issues like convenience, time, and future benefits. Focus on price also destroys brand equity, because consumers are encouraged to bid down the branded item. This is a coupon offer that undercuts the coupon's traditional narrow role of building ties between brand and the price-sensitive consumer.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a value-discovery network that revolutionizes and accelerates the market, and the Detailed Description section hereof discloses such a value-discovery network.